Architecture at the Edge Festival returns with a critical and climate-friendly festival programme that will embrace a wide range of city walks, seminars, exhibitions, talks, film screenings, workshops, and more.
This year, the festival is set to have the perfect host for its showcase exhibitions, with a range of works to be displayed at the Festival Printworks Gallery next to the Portershed a dó on Market street for the duration of the event.
This is the first time the festival will have a dedicated space for architecture in the city and the RIAI President, Charlotte Sheridan, will formally open the event. The Festival Gallery will feature work from over a dozen individual artists/ architectural practises such as Valerie Mulvin, (McCullough Mulvin Architects ), BothAnd Group, Aidan Conway, (MarMar architects ), photographic work from artists Joe Laverty, Adian O’Neill and Ruby Wallis, as well as winning projects from the EU Mies van der Rohe awards produced at CCAE. Valerie herself will be present and introduce her project ‘Join the Dots’ - 100 small ideas for sustainable change.
In total, the festival will extend over 10 days with over +50 events that revolve around the social, cultural and climatic contexts that characterise the city, the region and its built environment. In connection with this year’s theme `re-mapping´, which will examine the spaces of architecture and its impact on our lived environment, the AATE Director, Frank Monahan has put together a programme that focuses sharply on an overlooked niche within architectural research, namely the relationship between the landscape and architecture.
‘We’re thrilled to announce that A Fragile Correspondence - Scotland’s exhibition at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, and Josephine Michau chief curator of Copenhagen Architecture Festival and curator of The Danish Pavillion at the Venice Biennale will both be presented at this year’s Festival,’ he said.
A Fragile Correspondence takes us on a journey through three Scottish landscapes; the Highlands, Islands and Lowlands. Highlighting cultures and languages that have a close affinity with the landscapes of Scotland, the work explores alternative perspectives and new approaches to the challenges of the worldwide climate emergency.
Josephine Michau calls Coastal Imaginaries “a laboratory for hope in a world of viral hopelessness”, her presentation will offer insight into concrete principles for how we can adapt to the rising sea levels and ever more frequent storm floods caused by climate change, which will dramatically change our coastal landscapes this century.
During the festival period, you will be able to experience a cornucopia of talks, tours, workshops, exhibitions, conversations and film screeings. All events are spread across Galway City and County when the festival, directs attention to both the hotspots and blind spots of architecture, from the environmental crisis, to building back better, the relationship between form and landscape is rethought via new narratives, metaphors and models for architecture and its creation.
BothAnd Group will present the exhibition “Meat and Two Veg” which aims to question the role that architectural agency can play in the visual translation of the ‘complex assemblages’ of the Irish food system. The research is centred around a typical plate of Irish food - meat and two vegetables - centring ecology within our practice and architectural discourse.
And if that to the liking of your palate, then join ‘culinary connections’ at the Galway Saturday Market, beside St.Nicholas’ Church, on September 30 where you will meet architects; Jack O’Hagan and Bodil Eiterstraum at their market stall that showcases the significance of the Galway Market within the city’s food scene. They have remapped the interactions that reveals the intricate web of relationships within the market, highlighting the importance of the market on Galway’s vibrant food scene, and how it extends its influence throughout the city.
The above events are just a fraction of the festival’s extensive programme with 50+ events that can be experienced throughout Galway City and County during this year’s architecture festival in October.
The wild and budding ideas of our time, which take root in concepts such as regenerative design and co-creation, are the guidelines for this year’s program. The festival offers an opportuntity to expand our domestic discussion about the future of planning, landscapes and built environments, a necessary recalibration of our architectural imagination in relation to the age of environmental crisis.
The shore, as Seamus Heaney once wrote, is where ‘things overflow the brim of the usual’, and owing to climate change, habitats at the brim are being lost at a rapid pace and, analogous to other landscapes, the coastline of Mulranny in County Mayo is also hanging in the balance. At the Festival Printworks Gallery, a presentation of the ongoing project will be made by architect Helen McFadden to make visible the dwindling entanglements holding our landscapes together. The presentation will be followed by an interdisciplinary panel discussion – with - to strengthen these ties by initiating a public discussion about the future of our coastline.
Co-created with the communities of the west of Ireland, the AATE Festival is an opportunity to be part of the region’s largest showcase of architecture and helps define how we would like our built environment to be represented, discussed, and shaped.
Tickets for the festival’s events can be ordered online via Eventbrite. Most events are FREE. Find ticket information for each event on our website www.architectureattheedge.com
